The company was formed in 1981 following a decree issued by His Highness the Late Amir of Bahrain, Sheikh Isa Bin Salman Al Khalifa undertaken together with the governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, and Qatar.

The plant was constructed by Kaiser Engineering, USA. The machinery was installed by Kobe Steel of Japan who also undertook the start-up operation and the training of local staff at one of their aluminium plants in Japan.

GARMCO produced its first 20,000 tonnes of rolled aluminium in 1986.Today, GARMCO is the largest downstream aluminium facility in the Arabian Gulf region and our success is complemented by the continued success of our close neighbor, ALBA. Success that is reflected in our continuous increase in capacity, enrichment of our product range and continued investment in downstream facilities and associated offices around the world.

The original GARMCO facility had an annual capacity of 40,000 tonnes. Through equipment enhancement, this increased to 70,000 tonnes by 1990. GARMCO then invested in a second cold-rolling mill and related facilities, resulting in the current annual capacity of 125,000 tonnes. A further update of the facilities was done in 2004 to raise the capacity to 145,000 tonnes. In 2005 another fine tuning on the existing equipment was carried out to reach a capacity of 165,000 tonnes.

 A foil mill installation with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes commenced in 2000 and upgraded to 20,000 tonnes. In 2006 a new initiative to also upgrade it to 35,000 tonnes.

The overseas division was set up in 1991, with the opening of the sales office in Hong Kong, and expanded to the current structure as described in GARMCO worldwide. This expansion is an ongoing policy for GARMCO.